In this post I’m continuing my account of the children of John and Mary Ann Londors (my 3 x great grandparents on my mother’s side) by writing about their fourth child William. I’d like to acknowledge the contribution of Jenny Moynihan, a distant relative and fellow researcher, whose photographs of William’s daughter Caroline I’ve used below.

William Londors was born in about 1837 in Barking, and in the 1841 census he can be found, aged 4, living with his parents and siblings at White Hall, Barking.

Ten years later William, now 14, is still living at home in ‘Beehive’, Barking, and is working as an agricultural labourer, like his father and older brother John. Very little has changed by 1861, when 24 year old William can be found with his parents at Hattons Corner and still working as an agricultural labourer: except that he is now the eldest of the Londors children still at home, his brother John and sister Elizabeth both having married in the intervening period.

Shadwell, east London, in Greenwood's 1827 map

On 7th February 1864, when he was 27 years old, William Londors married Caroline Harriet Feller at the church of St. Thomas, Stepney. Caroline was born in 1842 in Shadwell, the daughter of Robert Stephen Feller and Jane Caroline (or Catherine) Craddock. Robert worked variously as a coal whipper, butcher and tripe dresser. Caroline was the third of five children. Her mother Jane died in 1848 after the birth of her last child, and the 1851 census finds Caroline and her younger sister Sarah living with their widowed father in Philip Street, Shadwell. (In the map above Philip Street is on the left towards the top: coincidentally, it’s the next street to Cornwall Street where my Webb ancestors lived.) In 1854 her father married again, to another widow, Elizabeth Weatherell nee Roberts.

A tripe dresser

As with the marriages of his older siblings, John Schofield and Elizabeth Londors, the East End location of William’s marriage is something of a mystery. At least in this instance the choice of Stepney is justified in that it was Caroline’s home parish. But how did William meet her in the first place, given that he appears to have spent the whole of his life up to this point as a farm labourer in Barking, some eight or nine miles away?

William and Caroline certainly did not linger in Stepney after their marriage: their first child, William George, was born in Barkingside later in the same year. Certainly by the 1871 census they were living in St Swithins Road, Barking, close to Fern Hall and next door to William’s sister Elizabeth, her husband George Smith, and their children. In addition to young William, 6, there were now two more sons: James, 3, and John, 1.

Ten years later they were still at the same address, except that it had been renamed ‘Hattons Corner Beehive’. Four daughters (Mary Ann, 9, Caroline Harriet, 7, Elizabeth Sarah or Lizzie, 5, and Sarah Ann, 3) and another son (George Robert, 6 months) had been born in the interim. James, 13, and John, 11, are also still at home, but William George, who would have been 17, is absent and I’ve been able to find him elsewhere in the records for this year, or indeed in any later records.

William and Caroline Londors had one more child, Charles, born in 1882. He can be found with them at the same address as before, in the 1891 census. James, 23, a carman, and John, 21, a farm labourer, are still living at home, as are Mary, 19, Caroline, 17, Elizabeth, 15, Sarah, 13 and George, 11.

On 7 March 1892 William and Caroline’s daughter Caroline married John James Prudence in Woolwich. On 1901 they were living in Chigwell Road, Woodford with their children William John, 9, Charles, 7, Elizabeth, 4, and John James, 1. In time they would have a further five children: Jane Caroline (born in 1902), Margaret (1904), Alma Grace (1906), Mary Bridget (1911) and Thomas (1917).

Caroline Harriet Prudence nee Londors

Caroline Harriet Prudence nee Londors with her daughter Alma

In December 1894 William and Caroline’s daughter Mary Ann married Elliott French Scarborough and in 1901 they were living at 2 Red House Cottages, Woodford Bridge Lane, with their three children, Emma, 5, Edith, 4, and Jack, 2. Also present were two boarders, Mary Ann’s younger brothers George, 20, and Charles, 18, who are both said to be working as ‘contractors carmen’.

In about 1895 William and Caroline’s daughter Elizabeth Sarah married Charles William Taylor. They would have five children: William (born in 1896), George (1897), Frederick (1900), John Alfred (1900) and Ellen Caroline (1901).

William Londors died in 1899, at the age of 62. In 1901 his widow Caroline, 57, was living with her daughter Elizabeth Taylor and her family at Fern Hall Cottages and earning her keep as a farm labourer. I’m not sure of the date of Caroline’s death.